


Can’t Take The Sky

by Glinda



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: femgenficathon, Gen, Serenity POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-31
Updated: 2010-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serenity does not understand grief; Serenity understands grief all too well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can’t Take The Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Behold my obscenely late [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/femgenficathon/profile)[**femgenficathon**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/femgenficathon/) ficathon entry from the summer. Prompt was: _I have begun to feel/ That it is dreams, not reality,/On which I can rely. -- Ono no Komachi(c. 825 — c. 900), 9th-century Japanese poet._ Why yesterday I could suddenly write 1000 words of it when I haven't been able to add a single word since August, I don't know but its done, and I'm oddly proud of it. Serenity POV fic.

Serenity does not understand grief. Her crew is hurting though, she knows that much, so she hurts too. They scrub her clean of her borrowed, filthy colours; the ones that revolted them and kept them safe on the journey to Miranda. She cannot comprehend what difference they made, just another disguise to wear, only that their removal eases something within her crew. She’s hurting pretty bad after the fight and they patch her up while they scrub her down, some with tenderness, others with anger. Their motivations should hardly matter afterwards but the emotions attached reflect back on her, leaving her feeling beautiful, loved and not a little sad.

Two of her crew are gone, forever, never coming back, and she feels their absence. She felt them go and feels the gaps where they should be but aren’t, like an ache in some part of her systems that no amount of Kaylee’s fixing can mend. She feels the spaces between those who remain, some which will heal with time and love, others that never will, and hurts with their hurt.

Serenity understands grief all too well.

 _I’m a leaf on the wind; watch how I soar._

In all her long years of flying, Serenity can remember every single crew member she’s had. Time steals their names and faces away from her but the essence of the person, the role they played with the crew, remains in her memory. The brush of their hand over her controls, the thud of boots on her gantries, or the way their voice echoed through her corridors. She’s come to recognise crew before they become crew, can tell the ones who’ll stay and the ones who’ll go. Recognise those who will cause hurt or affect healing; shame she’s never learnt how communicate that to her Captain.

Serenity’d grown used to her pilot. She’d spent years and years without any sort of crew, abandoned and forgotten, it had been strange to once again have a pilot. Poking and prodding, soothing and cajoling, talking to her like she should be able to understand. They’d learned to understand each other, to float and soar on the air currents and space winds in ways she’d never known she could, had forgotten she was capable of doing. Her bridge feels empty with his passing, not even a ghost remains to haunt her halls, however much those of her crew that remain stand and stare or avoid looking at the places where her pilot should be, he is not there to be seen. Every pilot is unique and irreplaceable she knows, as surely she knows that no will ever fill his shoes, she knows that someone must do his job – and soon – and that soon they will come to be every bit as irreplaceable and essential to the crew’s running. Some of the crew understand that; others don’t.

Serenity knew the little one was a pilot, soon as she came aboard the ship. Ships don’t dream but they do need rest nonetheless, and River can walk in the places where the part of Serenity that watches over her crew, that feels engine problems like a wound, goes to rest.

Serenity knows how it feels to be broken. To have someone take you apart and put you back together again, stronger and changed. She has known and gloried in such experiences. Serenity also knows that humans are not meant to be remodelled. She is not the ship she was before Mal found her; her Captain had seen things in her what no one else had in longer than Serenity can remember. She can never go back to the way she was in her glory days but neither would she want to. River cannot go back; her brother does not understand that she would not wish to. Some things cannot be unknown, unlived.

After all, everyone knows an albatross is a ship’s good luck.

 _I don't care what you believe in, just believe in it._

The Companion remains. Inara speaks of leaving, plans and schemes half made and shared with the Captain. Not acted upon. Inara has loved Serenity since the moment she laid eyes on her; Inara will love Serenity long after they have parted for the last time.

Serenity does not understand human interactions, the language of the way they touch and hurt each other does not translate into the code and maths and physics of her existence. Yet she feels the love in Inara’s touch as she trails fingers over bulkheads as surely as she finds it in Kaylee’s running repairs and nimble tinkering. She likes to feel Inara safe within her shuttle whether curled up laughing with Kaylee or sharing her body as she plies her trade – so similar to yet so different from the way Serenity shares her own body with her crew.

Inara is not a woman of faith, she does not owe any allegiance to any cause. She is a businesswoman with a respectable career, she does not waste time fearing the unknown; the known is far too dangerous to ignore. Yet she dreams of things that she tells herself can never be. Inara stays with the crew, fights by their side in every way she knows how. She dreams of a better world where the knowledge they carry did not come with a price paid in the blood of their friends or River’s fractured mind, but she lives in one where it did. So she believes in the cause that Serenity has come to embody and that if there can be no justice at least the truth will be known. That it will be enough.

 _She understands. She doesn't comprehend._

Kaylee works on Serenity’s engines long after they are fully repaired. Cleaning, oiling and tinkering as she lets the new information of the previous few weeks sink in and settle. Kaylee understands the warnings Serenity whispers through her components as though she was born to it. Serenity had been quite satisfied with the first mechanic Mal had hired to take care of her, he’d been reasonably capable and competent, and no more able to read her attempts to communicate than most of his predecessors. She will always remember him fondly because he found her Kaylee. Kaylee is something else entirely and Serenity bathes in the love Kaylee – with her big heart, big enough for the entire crew – exudes. Serenity can do things for Kaylee that she could do for no others, stays in the air for Kaylee when she longs to fall because Kaylee fights for her in turn. Argues and cajoles, persuades and bribes all sorts for parts and repairs, all out of love for her ship.

Kaylee talks while she works on Serenity. About recent events and wider political significances. Trying to settle in her mind the probable consequences and outcomes of their course of action. Her words are incomprehensible to Serenity but she does glean that while Kaylee has worries she does not have doubts. They are all set on this course together and determined to see it through.

They understand what is happening to them, in facts and injuries, but neither of them comprehends why or what the eventual cost might be. It is too big and too vast to get their respective minds around. Serenity suspects that the only member of her crew who truly comprehends is River, and that that might be what broke her. Serenity does not understand human emotions but she suspects what she feels is something like relief.

 _She's torn up plenty, but she'll fly true._

Serenity and Zoë hadn’t trusted each other when they first met. Not one little bit.

Serenity had known from the first time Mal had set foot inside her that he was meant to be her Captain. His love was instant, irrational and illogical, no less true for all that it is platonic, and so it has remained. Serenity had known the moment Zoë had set foot upon her deck that if Mal was to be her Captain then it was Zoë she needed to win over. They were a matched set, whether they knew it or not, and however wilful Mal was, however determined to go his own way he was, he wanted – needed truly, though her would never admit it – Zoë’s support and approval on this project. Serenity knows that Zoë does not see what Mal sees in her, but she trusts in his trust that she can be made to see.

Serenity would have preferred a more mathematical minded pilot, less instinctual, but she’d liked Wash and the way he treated her, more he was right for her crew. Even in the middle of a blazing argument he made Zoë happy, despite her initial protestations, and in time they fit together like cogs, working perfectly. (A happy crew made a happy Captain, which was a pleasant bonus) Slowly Zoë had come to trust Serenity’s judgement and over time, Serenity in turn had come to trust Zoë and to follow her orders in Mal’s stead.

Zoë is unsentimental and practical, strong like few humans know how to be. Will follow her Captain into hell itself if she has to, and drag him back into the light whether he likes it or not. She is the one who can tell him to stop when he is so far gone that no one else’s words have any impact, and have him listen. And if this life of theirs ever breaks Mal, makes a monster out of their Captain, then it will be Zoë who takes her gun and makes him stop, no matter what the price. Serenity has grown to love Zoë best, for being able to do all the things Serenity wishes to do but cannot, to say the things that Serenity has not words to say. With River around to translate now, Serenity hopes that one day she may be able to convince Zoë that she has her back.

Grief does not break Zoë any more than battle has broken Serenity; they are both made of stronger stuff than that. They are both in need of time to mend right now, and neither is ashamed to admit that though they may never say the words. So when Zoë takes a moment to rest her forehead against the cool metal of Serenity’s bulkhead, the ship tries to pass on as much energy as she can spare from her own healing. Whether it reaches her or not, Zoë seems to draw strength from the action anyway.

Serenity understands now why they didn’t trust each other back then; they both saw too much of themselves in each other. They trust each other now, for pretty much the same reasons in the end.

~

Everything goes somewhere and she goes everywhere. They can’t stop the signal. She will not allow it.


End file.
